Interview with an Oni
by Hoshiguma-douji
Summary: Determined to outshine Aya's fabricated journalism, Hatate interviews Yuugi in hopes of coming up with a factual but fascinating article, only to uncover the darkest parts of her past...
1. Chapter 1

"What're you using this for, anyway?"

Himekaidou Hatate lifted her eyes from her notebook over to the blonde oni who sat across from her. "The interview?"

She nodded. She was often reported to be tall and voluptuous, possibly by Aya's dishonest account, but Hoshiguma Yuugi was neither of the sort. Hatate figured that Yuugi was at least fifteen centimeters shorter than her own mere 163. But even though she lacked height, she still radiated with power, a warm but aggressive charisma to rival even the Scarlet Devil's. In fact, Hatate felt a little intimidated by her.

"It's for my newspaper," Hatate replied, trying not to add "sexy in a confindent and athletic way" to Yuugi's written description. Yuugi was rather pretty, even though she didn't fit Gensokyo's usual definition of "small and girlish" as "sexy."

There was no doubt that Yuugi was alarmingly petite, but there wasn't anything girlish about her. Her voice was low in a feminine way, her words slightly slurred with raspy undertones.

Hatate remembered Aya talking about how long and gorgeous Yuugi's hair was, but at the moment, it was above her shoulders in a layered-but-functional bob. Had her hair been longer, it would've aided to her girlishness, which Hatate figured was the very reason she cut it; however, Yuugi must've had enough femininity to dye her hair. Since Yuugi was short, Hatate had a clear view of dark brown roots down the part in the center of her bleach-blonde hair.

To Hatate, it was obvious from her mannerisms, her tone, and her muscular build that Yuugi didn't want to be viewed as a child. But in journalism, a journalist must keep her opinions out of the article and keep the interview objective. Hatate's objective was simply to hear and record Yuugi's life story, which she was sure would be quite an adventure.

Yuugi quirked an eyebrow. "I'm not that interesting. Go interview the vampires if you want something intense and dramatic. Besides, don't you just write about murder?"

"Not only," Hatate replied. "I want to beat Aya."

Yuugi grinned and cracked her knuckles. "I'll beat her for you. I'll knock her outta the damned sky. Give her a little taste of what we oni've been through."

Hatate flinched as Yuugi hit her hand on the table for emphasis. "I suppose we have a common enemy," she said, struggling to keep her voice even.

Yuugi shrugged. "I ain't overly fond of the tengu in general." She took a drink of sake from her dish. "No offense."

"None taken. I'm not proud of my heritage," Hatate replied, "but I wasn't alive during the War. I was hoping you could tell me your side."

Yuugi scowled, an expression Hatate never hoped to see again, as it made her stomach churn with fear. "What, so you can write it up and make me sound like a bad guy? You're a tengu and a journalist, the worst liar of the lot."

Hatate was getting angry now. Even though she knew that tengu were, as illusionists, liars by nature, she strived not to be and felt offended that Yuugi called her one. "I want to beat Aya by writing a real article with real answers!" Hatate snapped. "If I wanted a bullshit story about Remilia's tortured childhood or Marisa's sex life, I'd read the fucking Bunbunmaru!"

Yuugi's eyes widened, brilliant gold irises with flecks of crimson and heavily dilated pupils. "I think I like you, Hatate-san," she said.

Hatate's cheeks turned pink. "You do?"

Yuugi leaned across the table and put her hand on Hatate's. "Sure I do. I look for two main qualities in people: honesty and passion. I think you've hit both." After filling up another sake dish and sliding it over to Hatate, Yuugi asked, "So, where shall I begin?"


	2. Chapter 2

Hatate flipped on her recording device and readied her pen. She planned on taking notes as they talked and saving the recording, too, for further research.

"Start from the beginning," she said. "Tell me about your earliest memories."

There was a soft smile on Yuugi's lips, a blissful expression Hatate had seen on Suika's face but didn't expect to see on the tougher oni. "I was abandoned by my mother as a baby, like all oni, left to die for being abnormal."

"You seem happy about that," Hatate remarked, jotting notes as she listened to the oni's response.

"It was for the best," Yuugi replied. "I honestly don't think she could've handled me. It bothers me that I never knew her, but I'm much older now. I don't think about it as much now as I did as a kid."

"How old _are_ you?"

Yuugi took a thoughtful swig of sake. "1,112. I was born in the late summer of 900, near Ooeyama, left in the woods to die."

"But you obviously didn't."

Yuugi emitted a bitter laugh. "Yeah, we oni are pretty hard to kill, even as infants." She leaned back in her chair. "In the forest I was in, there was a satori named Kagami who lived behind this old abandoned jinja. She began rescuing the children she saw abandoned and raising them as her own.

"The jinja marked tengu territory; she lived below Ti'Kano-"

"I was born there," Hatate interrupted, then blushed.

Yuugi grinned. "It's a beautiful place. I spent a lot of my time in those trees, spying on the tengu and getting the other orphans to play pranks with me. I befriended a lot of your kind, actually." She smiled. "I was rather naive then. Being the only oni in Kagami's orphanage, I was the strongest and loudest of all the children, putting me as the leader. I sort of approached all circumstances as something to be ruled ever since I first figured that out.

"Even so, I had a rather simple childhood. I got into a lot of trouble, of course, especially with the tengu boys of Ti'Kano, the only kids brave enough to play with me. But after I started becoming a woman, we grew apart. Kagami wanted me to settle down, to focus on what women were supposed to do. She put me in charge of looking after the little ones while she was away, finding me a suitable husband."

Hatate gasped. "Kagami was going to marry you off?"

Yuugi nodded. "It was what everyone did at the time, once their girls got their periods."

"But you're an oni! How would that ever work?" Hatate was writing like mad; in fact, her hand was starting to cramp.

"The Mist. You should be rather familiar with that, being a tengu."

Hatate nodded. Mist was what concealed the youkai from the humans. Tengu possessed the ability to manipulate their own layer of Mist in order to create illusions.

"Unlike yours, though, my Mist is unconscious," Yuugi continued. "I can't make myself look anything but human in the human world."

Hatate put her pen down and inspected her throbbing hand. "So did you get married?" She asked.

"Hell no!" Yuugi laughed loudly, as if she thought the prospect of marriage was as absurd as Hatate found it. "I ran away with my best friend, Suika."


	3. Chapter 3

Hatate's eyes widened. She knew that the two oni were close friends, but she had no idea that they had known each other for over a millennium.

"When did you first meet Suika?" she asked. "Did she live in the same orphanage?"

Yuugi shook her head. "She was homeless. I don't know her past really well because she gets really emotional about it." She smirked. "Suika's always been a tough girl. She doesn't like to be caught crying. And believe me, it's heartbreaking to watch." She took a swig of sake and swished it around her mouth thoughtfully. "That's the biggest difference between Suika and me; I wear my heart on my sleeve, in a sense, and Suika closes herself off when things hit too close to home. That being said, she's still brutally honest, like me, only not with herself."

Hatate noted Yuugi's perspective on Suika in the margin, figuring that Yuugi knew her well enough to have a clear idea of what she was like.

Before she could ask more, Yuugi rattled on. "Most oni tend to have a drinking problem, and Suika is, by far, the worst of all of us. My reasons for drinking are dependent on the situation, but I really just like the flavor." She grinned and shivered. "I like to feel. I've always been kind of an adrenaline addict, which is why I'm athletic and impulsive. And with alcohol, there's this sort of burn and rush.

"But Suika drinks because she doesn't like reality. She wants to live in a constant state of drunken reverie."

Hatate paused to mull that over. "So, in other words, drinking adds to and is part of your life, and, for Suika, drinking is her escape from life?"

"Exactly!" Yuugi exclaimed.

Hatate wrote a little more, then repeated her earlier question.

"Ah, sorry. I got off-topic." Yuugi rubbed the back of her neck. "I was ten and she was eight when we first met. She lived with a group of human orphan boys, and they ran amok around the countryside, stealing food and whatnot from the villages. Eventually, the boys were murdered, and Suika escaped from their attacker and sought shelter in the old jinja by the orphanage."

"Murdered!" Hatate exclaimed. She now understood why Suika was an escapist. To be abandoned and then to have your friends die is hard at any age, and Hatate figured it would be unbearable for an eight-year-old girl, regardless of species.

Yuugi nodded. "Suika's little band of orphan plunderers weren't the only plunderers on the roads. They were attacked by a band of bigger, older thieves, who were willing to kill for food."

"And Suika let the thieves live?"

"Her instinct was to run, but she got her revenge later on.

"We met while I was swimming, actually. There was an old creek that the orphans and I would play in, and sometimes, at night, I'd sneak off and swim alone. There was a thrill of danger that came with it, and I really liked the silence." She smiled. "Even oni do like quiet alone time once in a while.

"So I was swimming-naked, I must add, which was obviously unladylike-and I saw her watching."

Hatate snorted. "What did you do?"

"I threw a rock at her and told her to fuck off."

Hatate laughed, a little louder than she intended, then blushed. "So then what?"

"She stripped down and joined me. Said she needed a tough girl to protect and help her." There was an interesting light in Yuugi's eyes, and Hatate noticed that her cheeks were a little flushed. "And we talked until dawn. She was the first oni I'd met outside myself, and she and I just really clicked. We spent every night together after that. I moved my stuff into the jinja, and Suika and I lived there together. I didn't tell Kagami about Suika, since I promised to keep her a secret, but we spent most of those two years together."

Hatate noticed that Yuugi was rather animated when she talked, but she used her hands even more when she talked about Suika. _It's almost like she's a little girl with a crush,_Hatate thought. Before she rejected the idea, she asked, "Do you like Suika?"

"Yes. She's my best friend."

"No, I mean..."

"_OH._" Yuugi's blush darkened a little, and she laughed, but there was a slight sadness in her eyes. "Yes, I'm in love her." Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. "I always have been and I always will."


	4. Chapter 4

An awkward silence filled the room. Hatate instantly regretted her question; after all, one should only truly fear oni when they're silent.

Yuugi was inspecting her sake dish with an odd expression on her face. Her narrowed eyes were bright and glinting with tears, but her dreamy smile betrayed the almost angry expression. Hatate also noticed Yuugi's fangs for the first time; they were long enough to poke into her lower lip.

_Lust,_ Hatate thought. _That's what she's feeling._ Hatate had read somewhere that an oni's fangs only came out when they were feeling passionate, and since they were discussing the love of Yuugi's life, Hatate figured that the memories were starting to get to her.

"Do you need to take a break?" Hatate asked softly.

Yuugi looked up, the expression of lust sending chills down Hatate's spine. Their eyes met, and Hatate felt a tingling sensation in her core. She crossed her legs and averted her eyes.

_Aya was right about oni charisma_, Hatate thought. She desperately wanted to throw down her pen and lie beneath Yuugi, letting her do as she pleased.

"Do _you_?" Yuugi asked with a laugh, making Hatate jump.

"Oh! Uhh..." Hatate's cheeks flushed and she straightened posture. "No, I'm good."

"Then so am I." Yuugi wiped a few stray tears from her eyes, the brightness in her irises beginning to fade. "So where were we?"

"Does she know?" Hatate blurted. Her blush darkened. "Suika. I mean..."

"She knows," Yuugi replied, refilling her sake dish. "We're friends-with-benefits, after all."

"You've had sex with Suika." Hatate stated her question almost increduously, as if she couldn't picture the two oni going at it.

"Oh, of course," Yuugi replied. "Loads of times. Not always regularly." She then proceeded to fill Hatate's empty, abandoned dish. "But we've always been close.

"I was twelve when I ran away with her. It wasn't a romantic thing at the time, though we did establish that we liked each other."

"I'm sure you did," Hatate said with a smile, sipping her sake.

She winced, not expecting it to be so strong; culturally, tengu watered their alcohol down a lot more with fruit juices. Hatate almost wondered if the simple difference in beverages said something about their differences in species; while tengu sugarcoated the burn of alcohol just as they spewed passive-aggressive insults in writing, oni kept their sake as straightforward and powerful as their presences.

"I mean," Hatate continued, "you two slept together in that jinja, and everyone knows that oni aren't very innocent, even as children."

Yuugi choked on her sake, then laughed. Once she managed to catch her breath, she replied, "You're right. We were very experimental. She was my first kiss, actually. And we did fool around a little, I won't deny that."

"So you lost your virginity to Suika?"

Yuugi shrugged. "I never thought of myself as ever having virginity."

"Good point." Hatate blushed as a particularly dirty thought came into her mind. "Can I ask you a really personal question?"

"Ask me anything. It's what you're here for, yeah?" Yuugi winked.

"Did you come?"

Yuugi's eyes widened. "I wasn't expecting that." Then she grinned. "What kind of article are you writing?"

"This isn't for the article," Hatate reassured her. "I'm just curious. I always thought that sex didn't count if you didn't orgasm."

"I told you that i loved her. I didn't know what orgasms were at the time, and neither did she, but we both did. And we kept playing around, not really knowing exactly what it_was_, only that it felt good."

"That's really romantic, for some reason," Hatate said. "But going back on topic: why did you run away?"

"Several reasons. First of all, I didn't want to get married or have kids. At the same time, Suika heard a rumor that there was an oni village up Ooeyama, and she wanted to go find it and be with her own kind. I wouldn't let her go by herself, and I wanted to meet other oni, too. So we departed together.

"It was a big deal to us, all this freedom. I cut my hair off. I always wanted to do it, but Kagami wouldn't let me because I was a lady. And I got my name, too. Suika and I named each other. It sort of marked a new beginning."

"Named?" Hatate asked. "You didn't have a name before?"

"Kagami named me Hoshi, after my horn," Yuugi said with a smirk. "She'd never seen an oni with a star on her horn before. And as far as we knew, I was born with it, and she thought that it sort of _made_ me a star.

"At the time, Suika was going by her current last name, Ibuki, because she was born and abandoned at the base of Ibukiyama.

"She gave me the name I use now, Yuugi, because she thought of me as her personal bodyguard, even though we were the same size. And I named her Suika. I never really knew why...it just fit.

"Are you hungry?"

"Hmm?" Hatate finished writing and looked up.

"I'm starving. We should get food." Yuugi grinned. "I can show you around the City. There's this really nice bar down the road that serves me for free since I'm a Deva."

Hatate stood and stretched, letting her wings spread behind her. Since Yuugi opened up to her, Hatate figured that she, too, could let her guard down.

"Whoa," Yuugi sighed. "Can I feel them?"

Trying to ignore the somewhat laughable height difference between the two of them, she turned around, crow wings spread. She shivered as she felt Yuugi's fingers brush against the feathers.

"How tall are you?" Hatate asked.

"148cm. I've been this tall since I left the orphanage," Yuugi replied. "Does that surprise you?"

"Yeah...I heard you were tall."

"Suika once told me that I'm only as tall as I make myself," she said. "In her case, it's literally true, but I think she means presence. If I hold myself high and use my charisma, people will think I tower over them."

Hatate nodded and closed her eyes, dissolving beneath her light touches. "I'm 163cm, so I'm a lot shorter than Aya."

"It's a good height to be," Yuugi replied. "Your wings are really pretty, by the way." She withdrew her hands hand faced Hatate. "You shouldn't hide them."

Hatate knew what Yuugi meant by holding herself high. Before, they were only sitting, and she noticed that the oni had a rather straight posture, even with her elbows on the table, but now, she didn't feel like Yuugi was unbearably petite anymore. It also helped that she wore her getas, probably adding a few centimeters. And her semi-transparent skirt revealed her legs, adding to the illusion of height.

"If you're done checking me out, are you ready to see the City?" Yuugi asked with a sideways grin.

Hatate tried to hide her embarrassment. "Yes, let's go."

And they left the house, arms linked.


	5. Chapter 5

For being in Former Hell, Hatate found the Ancient City to be a rather merry place, especially in the evening. The streets were lit with hanging lanterns and resonated with the sounds of oni folk music, laughter, and chatter.

"What's with that look on your face?" Yuugi asked, smiling up at Hatate.

"Oh..." Hatate averted her eyes, not wanting to become transfixed in Yuugi's gaze. "I haven't seen the City in the evening before. It's so lively."

Yuugi nodded. "We love it here. It's the one place we can be ourselves and make a living without human intervention." Then she grinned. "You like lively?"

"It's interesting," Hatate managed to say. "Tengu aren't as wild. I mean...Aya's a free spirit..."

"...but not like the oni. I get it." Yuugi gestured to a large and heavily lit building in front of them. "If you like lively, then you're in for a real treat. There's the bar."

Hatate's stomach churned with fear as Yuugi, being the gentleman she was, opened the door for her. There were oni everywhere, even more than she imagined could fit in the bar. And they were all talking and yelling at once, some even throwing things at each other.

"What kind of food do they have?" Hatate shouted over the noise. She wanted to steer Yuugi away from alcohol; she had a distinct feeling that Yuugi was tempted to get her drunk and seduce her, and as tempted as she was, she didn't think a sexual relationship with the oni would go so well.

"Oh, there's everything!" Yuugi gushed. Then her eyes lit up as she watched something from behind Hatate. "BITCH, WHAT'RE YOU DOING HERE?!"

"YUUGI!" A figure with red hair and large horns pushed through the crowd and approached Yuugi. Hatate's churning stomach dropped.

It was Suika.

Hatate felt really awkward, knowing all that Yuugi said, and since she thought she was developing quite the crush on Yuugi, the awkwardness swam in a sea of guilt and jealousy. The waves of that sea splashed as she watched the oni aggressively hug each other, and her cheeks flushed when they kissed. It wasn't long or overly passionate, more of a friendly peck on the lips than anything, but the way Yuugi closed her eyes made it seem really intimate.

_Poor Yuugi_, Hatate thought as the aforementioned oni motioned for her to follow them to a table in the corner. "Suika wants us to sit with her."

"Hatate-san," Suika asked as she sat down, "Why're you at an oni bar?"

"She's interviewing me for her paper," Yuugi replied. "I thought I'd treat her to dinner."

Suika giggled. "You're such a flirt, Yuugi, buying food for girls like that!"

Yuugi playfully punched her friend in the arm before turning back to Hatate. "See anything you want?"

Hatate tried to look busy with the menu. "Uhh...I was thinking that maybe you could just pick your favorite? I'm not familiar with oni cuisine, or your language, for that matter."

"No problem!" Yuugi yelled something in Oni to a violet-haired waitress.

Hatate heard their language in passing, and it wasn't at all like the languid, complex tengu language Hatate was used to. It was curt and edgy, sounding like a combination of Cantonese, German, and Farsi.

Suika said something to Yuugi in Oni, and they burst out laughing and fell into a loud, rapid-fire discussion. When Yuugi spoke Oni, it sounded aggressive and intimidating, but Suika made it sound cute with her slurred speech and higher-pitched voice. Hatate listened to them talk for a while before the waitress served drinks to the three of them and a bundle of leaves to Suika.

"I ordered you umeshu," Yuugi told Hatate, "because I figured it'd suit your tengu tastebuds."

Hatate bowed her thanks before freezing, staring at Suika, who was rolling the leaves. "Is that _marijuana_?!"

Suika giggled and brought the bundle to her lips before lighting it. She inhaled, closed her eyes, and blew the spicy smoke in Yuugi's face. "This place's got the best pot, Hatate-san," she said with a smile. "You want some?"

"I don't smoke."

Suika turned to Yuugi. "You?"

"Oh, what the hell." Yuugi inhaled, then burst into a coughing fit.

"She doesn't smoke, either," Suika told Hatate. "I think she's just giving into peer pressure."

"No," Yuugi wheezed, "you're just doing it all the time. I thought I should try it."

The waitress returned to their table, setting food before Yuugi and Hatate. Yuugi motioned to her sake dish and said something in Oni, which Hatate figured was asking for free refills.

Once the waitress bowed and left, Hatate asked, "So what is this?"

"Curry steak on cauli rice," Yuugi said, inhaling the dish with her chopsticks.

"Gimme that," Suika said, stealing a handful from Yuugi's plate and popping it in her mouth. Yuugi slapped her hand and pushed her plate away.

Hatate took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. It had a lot of flavor, unlike the sweet tengu food she was used to. "What's cauli rice?"

"Cauliflower pretending it's rice," Suika slurred before taking a drag. "Fucking poser."

Hatate swallowed. Her eyes began to water. The curry was a lot stronger than she originally thought, and she downed her umeshu to try to calm it down.

"Oh, shit," Yuugi said, "I forgot to tell them to hold the wasabi butter. I'll get you some water and fruit salad, hai?" Before asking for an answer, she shouted to the waitress again.

"I'm sorry, Yuugi," Hatate said, eyes downcast.

"Hey, don't feel bad. We're just used to different flavor. No big deal."

Her fruit came immediately, followed by Yuugi's sake. Although it was glazed with cinnamon and garlic, it was one of the most delicious dishes Hatate had eaten in her entire life. When she was finally through, she embraced Yuugi in thanks.

Yuugi laughed a little nervously before pulling her in and kissing the top of her head. She smelled like sake and curry and was so warm, Hatate didn't want to move.

"Hands off her!" Suika squealed.

Hatate pulled away, blushing furiously. "We should go continue the interview," Hatate said quickly.

"Some interview," Suika remarked with a smile. "Have fun, you crazies."

"You, too, Suika." Yuugi hugged and kissed her friend again before they departed.

"Your culture is realy interesting," Hatate said as they walked home and listened to the street musicians.

"I'm quite proud of it," Yuugi agreed. "Now, do you need me to walk you home later, or do you want to stay the night? If you're staying, I've got a futon."

Hatate grinned. Without skipping a beat, she said, "I'll totally stay."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: The rating went up. Not because it's a bunch of fun, drunken yuri smut, but because Yuugi's story gets much more mature and darker from here on out, and I think that it'll be too hard for some viewers to read. **

**You have been warned.**

Hatate found it hard to pick up where they left off. The umeshu Yuugi gave her was starting to make her feel lightheaded and oddly aroused, and although the sensations were neither unfamiliar nor unpleasant, she wanted to focus.

"So, uh," Hatate began, switching the recorder back on and readying her pen, "what happened after you two ran away?"

Yuugi sighed. "Our freedom only lasted for a couple years, but they were great. We found the village at Ooeyama, but the oni there told us to stay as far away from there for as long as we could, and we did...for a while. We built a house in the neighboring woods and lived there together, hunting our food and brewing our own sake. After a while, we found a little girl on one of our moonlit hikes, and we decided to take her in. She couldn't talk, but she was very intelligent and empathetic, especially for a three-year-old."

"Someone abandoned a three-year-old in the woods?"

Yuugi shrugged. "She never told us what happened, since she was mute, and once we finally started speaking, she didn't remember. But she was an oni. A Blue Oni, unlike Suika and me." Before Hatate could ask what that meant, Yuugi said, "Red Oni are leaders and warriors, and Blue Oni are strategists and philosophers.

"Suika thought of us as her sisters, and for her sake, I tried to do the same, but I kept thinking of Suika as my wife and Tsuki-that's what we named her-as my daughter.

"Our third year of living together with Tsuki, we saw the oni captives pass our house. THey were chained together and led by tengu men. Tsuki felt their pain so strongly that she wouldn't eat or sleep; she'd rather die than let so many of our kind be tortured...unless if we went out to free them." Yuugi shook her head. "I was sixteen and dumb, and I agreed to do the deed. I left six-year-old Tsuki with Suika and went to find the oni."

Hatate dropped her pen. "Did you?"

Yuugi nodded, eyes brimming with tears. "I now knew why the tengu boys by the orphanage wouldn't play with me as I got older and why the oni at Ooeyama wanted us to stay away: oni were tengu slaves. Each oni lived on Ooeyama, so the tengu wouldn't be tainted by their filth and lowliness. Each tengu family had one oni. The oni that belonged to a single tengu neighborhood lived in a house with a Keeper, a low-ranked tengu to monitor them and make sure they did what their masters wanted. The oni slaves called their houses _xaevi_, which is the Oni word for 'family.' Even in a world full of hate, the oni were still close.

"I released the first xaevi I could find, and it had four: two Blue Oni: Kasen and Kanaka, and two Red: Kura and Tora. I broke their chains and brought them to my own xaevi, but Suika was gone." Yuugi rubbed her fingers beneath her eyes and sniffed. "We looked all over for them; Kanaka found Tsuki hiding beneath her bed, bleeding and horns broken.

"While Kasen nursed her back to health, I went outside to call for Suika and..."

Then Yuugi did something Hatate figured she'd never see her do: she burst into tears.

Hatate jumped up and went over to Yuugi's side of the table and pulled her into a tight embrace. "I'm sorry. I can stop asking if it's too hard."

"Part of being strong is accepting your own feelings," Yuugi said in between cries. "And I accept them and I'll still talk.

"I found her in the woods...tied to a tree...and they were...they were..."

"Who?" Hatate stroked Yuugi's hair.

"The damn _tengu_!" Yuugi shouted, hitting her fist on the table. Hatate noticed a large crack left behind the impact, shattering part of the wood. "They were having their way with her...she was screaming so hard, and as strong as she was...she couldn't fight them off..."

"Oh my gods."

"I killed them," Yuugi said. Her voice was quivering now, going up higher than Hatate figured it was able. "Snapped their necks and stole their swords. Tore them to pieces as Tora and Kura let Suika down. Suika was fine. She walked funny for a while and bled a lot, but she was alive. But Tsuki..."

Hatate watched the tears stream down her cheeks. _She really must've thought of Tsuki as her daughter,_ Hatate thought. _I've never seen an oni care so much about someone._

"Kasen said she'd never be able to bear children. Which would be fine, since most oni weren't even into men, but...oh, it was all my fault!"

"You didn't know they'd get to them!" Hatate exclaimed.

"Tsuki was only six years old and they...ravaged her like that. Like she was a fucking _ANIMAL_, not a child I had been caring for the past three years, feeding and loving like my OWN DAMN CHILD. And Suika! I told her every night that I loved her and I'd always be there for her..."

She buried her face in her hands as Hatate massaged her shoulders.

"So I did what any oni would do: I planned my revenge."


	7. Chapter 7

"That was the beginning of the War," Hatate thought aloud. Her eyes widened. "You started the war between our species!"

"I started nothing!" Yuugi hissed, teeth clenched and tears swill flowing. Hatate noticed that Yuugi didn't wear makeup, which somehow made her look more beautiful when she cried than the other emotional women Hatate had seen throughout the years. "I had no reason to hate the tengu before I found out they enslaved my xaevison, my species, and ravished my xaevi!" She bit her lip. "I'm a warrior at heart. If I believe in something, I will fight for it, no matter what. So I fought for the oni.

"Suika agreed to help me with vengeance, even though she was in pain. Kasen and Kanaka took care of Tsuki as Suika, Tora, and I reviewed our combat skills. Suika learned hers from living on the streets, and mine were from my tengu friends, but Tora was unique; she had a way of absorbing the life of the world around her to increase her own skills. She learned that, if she closed her eyes and just focused on her heart, she could feel the kami around her, encouraging her and giving her strength." Yuugi smiled a little sadly. "She was a force to be recogned with, that Tora."

"Where is she?" Hatate asked. She wanted to meet this Tora character.

Yuugi did an odd hand motion; she put both hands over her heart, linked her fingers, and pushed her palms outward. "_Ma'ea le kami no roku_," she said, then translated, "May her soul live on. It's an oni thing; when one of our sisters-in-arms passes on, that symbol is worth that whole prayer." She cleared her throat. "She died in combat a few hundred years ago, right before we moved to Former Hell."

"I'm sorry." Hatate didn't know what to say to make Yuugi feel better.

"She won't be dead forever. Even oni are part of the reincarnation cycle. Besides...life is a celebration, in oni culture. Death is only an awakening."

Hatate was in awe. Oni, on the surface, seemed like just a group of horned party girls with devil-may-care attitudes and impressive strength, but their culture was almost too complex for her to understand. Tengu were free spirits by nature, and many lived alone, exploring the skies as they saw fit. There was no unity, no pure, unabandoned love that she saw expressed as she witnessed oni interactions and heard Yuugi speak of her sisters-in-arms. She wouldn't deny that they were feisty and brash, and maybe a little annoying, but Hatate was transfixed. She wanted to learn all she could about the oni people, not just for her article, but for herself.

Yuugi went on, "Kasen made a plan; she wanted all of us to gather as many oni as we could, either by freeing them or by searching. She offered to stay with Tsuki, but there was no way I'd leave her again. So I stayed in our home as everyone else parted ways.

"The tengu had tracked us down. In the night, they burned our little house down and surrounded it, giving us the option to either burn to death or become a slave. I was almost willing to die...but then I looked at Tsuki and I saw hope. Even if we had to work for the tengu, t here could still be a way to break our chains.

"So we left the house. Well, I actually carried her, since she still had a limp. We lived together on Ooeyama for three years. Tsuki's tengu family was amazingly abusive, even though she was already forever crippled. They beat her, touched her, all sorts of disgusting things. My tengu family wasn't bad; I had to mother their four kids while the parents invented weapons during the day, and I was off duty once the kids were in bed.

"But knowing that my own little girl was being so abused killed me inside, so one night, after Tsuki fell asleep and I bandaged her up, I found her family and murdered them." Her eyes sparkled with tears and bloodlust. "And the War really began."


	8. Chapter 8

"You murdered them," Hatate said. She stopped rubbing Yuugi's shoulders-she didn't even noticed that she was still massaging the oni-and eyed her.

"Yes, I did. With that very kanabo that is hanging on my mantle."

Hatate looked up at the wicked-looking spiked club with its numerous blood stains. It had to be twice as long as Yuugi was tall, and the spikes made it probably at least three times as heavy.

"You smashed them to death."

Yuugi nodded. She had an evil grin on her face, a false happiness, and the tears had finally ceased flowing. "Yes. In their beds. Then I threw them out of the tree." She sighed. "Unfortunately, their remains-yes, remains at this point-had landed on the home of the city leader. He awoke his warriors and sent them to kill me.

"At that point, I was high on bloodlust and armed. I don't remember how many I killed; my brain went fuzzy because I reverted to my true form. And that transformation attracted my xaevi. All of the oni who had departed returned within minutes-with some new friends. And we annihilated the entire city.

"We made Ooeyama our capitol and, knowing that we only destroyed one tengu city and that many more would be after us, we opened up a training school. I was the strongest, but Suika was the most skilled, so she was the leader. They called her Shuten-douji, the sake-drinker, the Oni with Bloodsoaked Hair. Kasen led her own following of oni with less physical interests but fascination with strategy and philosophy, and her disciples-and everyone else, really-called her Ibaraki-douji.

"That left Tora, Kanaka, Kura, and me. We were the four Devas, the Guma-doujis."

"I thought Suika and Kasen were Devas."

Yuugi shook her head. "They don't count because they were our leaders. We were sort of hired guns, in a way. We did the dirty work. They trained our youngsters and told us who to kill.

"But even though I was loyal to Suika and Kasen, I did something terrible: I fell for Kira, a tengu girl. She came into our village on a visit to see what oni did, and being naive, I took her word for it. She was distracting and intoxicating..."

"What did she look like?"

"Long black hair, always in a braid, wings like yours, very tall and limber. She was exquisite. I spent every moment I could with her." Yuugi's cheeks flushed. "She was amazing in bed. And for a while, even though small tengu cities attacked every once in a while, I forgot that I was supposed to hate them.

"Then I asked her to marry me."

Hatate gasped. "You didn't!"

Yuugi laughed. "I did. I told you I was naive! She said no. Ig ot mad and drank until I passed out. When I woke up, Tora had killed her beside my bed. Tora said she came to check on me and found Kira hovering over me with a knife on my throat."

"That must've been hard to handle," Hatate mused.

Yuugi nodded. "But I got over it. I guess part of me realized that she was a spy all along, pretending she loved me so she could get my secrets.

"I discovered that she was the daughter of a daitengu, and they came to kill us." Yuugi looked at Hatate. "I'm sure you know who they are."

Hatate nodded. Daitengu were the tengu-gods, the ones in charge of the entire tengu government. And they were the most skilled of all the tengu warriors.

"That was our final stand. We lost many of our students, and each of their deaths, despite our celebrations later, felt like a stab to my heart, but the pain kept me going. And in the end...we won.

"The daitengu surrendered; they lost too many of their men to us. They decided to make a pact, the Treaty the youkai talk about nowadays, that tengu and oni would live alongside each other as equals; after all, oni were still sentient warriors, and the tengu respected that and would no longer keep us as slaves.

"On that happy note..." Yuugi yawned. "I'm getting tired."

Hatate shut off her recording device and looked at the clock. It was one in the morning. "You going to go to bed?"

Yuugi nodded. "Sorry to cut this off..."

"It's fine," Hatate said. "I'll sleep on that futon."

"Can you get it down yourself?"

She nodded. "I'm strong."

"I'm sure you are." Yuugi smiled, then got up. "I'll just be down the hall if you need anything."


	9. Chapter 9

Hatate wanted to force herself to stay awake longer, to get started on actually writing her article, but she couldn't get her eyes to stay open after Yuugi left. Shaking her head, she untied her ponytails, stripped down to her undergarmets, and stretched the futon. Yuugi left a quilt and a pillow for her to sleep with, which Hatate was grateful for; oddly enough, Yuugi's house got really cold at night.

As Hatate unfolded the quilt, she noticed that the patches were all unique from each other. She splayed it out on the futon and inspected the panels. Hatate presumed that each square represented a different friend of Yuugi's because they were so unique from each other. They each had something written in Oni beneath the image, but Hatate couldn't decipher their alphabet. The images themselves were oni-like, too, since they displayed certain weapons or markings Hatate had only seen with the horned youkai.

The door down the hall creaked open, and Hatate jumped about a foot in the air.

"Didn't mean to scare you," Yuugi said as she entered the kitchen across from the living room. "Just needed my sleeping pill."

"Sleeping pill?" Hatate brought her knees to her chest to conceal her bra.

Yuugi nodded as she filled a glass of water. "I can't sleep without it." She slipped a small white pill between her lips and swallowed a sip of water before approaching Hatate.

Yuugi wasn't the sort of girl Hatate assumed would wear silky nightgowns or anything, and the fact that she wore fleece pajama pants and a T-shirt advertising something in Oni was somehow much sexier than anything else she could've worn. Hatate decided that the fact that Yuugi didn't try to dress overly sexy was what made her more attractive. That, and since the living room was chilly, Hatate could see small hardened nipples beneath the shirt.

"Oh! I accidentally gave you my Ooeyama quilt!" Yuugi exclaimed, oblivious to Hatate's wandering gaze. Yuugi grinned, revealing her fangs yet again. "It was Suika's idea that all the oni on Ooeyama would create a patchwork quilt and that we'd sew all the squares together as a symbol of our unity." She swallowed. "There was a plague, see, and Suika thought we'd all die without her, so she had to find a way to remember us after we died."

"Plague?" Even though Hatate was exhausted, her curiosity ignited a burning desire for extrapolation.

"Yeah, about a hundred years ago. The world started industrializing, and, being youkai, we couldn't breathe the polluted air. We got a sort of pneumonia, I guess. Eventually, a witch came in to cure us, but we had decreased to half of our usual population anyway. We moved underground after that." She yawned. "I'll tell you more in the morning. Sweet dreams." She kissed Hatate's forehead, just over her bangs, and Hatate's cheeks flushed.

After Yuugi left, she slid beneath the quilt, switched the light off, and fell into a deep sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Hatate awoke to the smell of bacon.

She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes before eyeing the oni in the kitchen, who was turning the bacon over while sipping something with a straw.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Yuugi called out with a smile. "That umeshu sure put you out, didn't it."

Hatate yawned and slid off of the futon to stretch. Her cheeks flushed once she remembered that she slept in her lingerie, and she quickly wrapped the quilt around herself.

Yuugi picked up on her embarrassment and set some bacon on the table. "The body is a work of art, Hatate," Yuugi said. "It's something to cherish, to love, to touch, not to conceal and deny." She gave her a different smile, a sort of warmth Hatate expected to see from a lover. "You shouldn't be ashamed of showing a little skin. In fact..." Yuugi set her drink on the table and stripped her pajamas off, tossing them beside her chair.

"Y-you don't have to do that!" Hatate exclaimed, her blush darkening.

"I don't," Yuugi agreed, "but I want to."

Hatate tried not to stare, but quickly found it impossible. Yuugi's skin was very light, most likely from living so far away from the sunlight, and she definitely did not boast the curves Aya mentioned, being petite with an athletic stature. Yet somehow, Hatate had never seen a more beautiful woman in her life. She wanted to reach out and feel her skin, even what was beneath the sports bra she wore, maybe inherit some of Yuugi's lust for life from physical touch...

But her thoughts were interrupted by Yuugi sliding into her chair and saying, "Let's eat."

Hatate set the quilt on the futon and stood. She could feel her skin prickle as Yuugi's eyes wandered over her exposed flesh, and after she got over its initial awkwardness, she liked being watched In a flurry of arousal and tengu pride, Hatate outstretched her wings and gave them a little flutter.

Yuugi grinned before shoving a lethal amount of bacon in her mouth. Hatate didn't know how a woman so pretty could behave without any etiquette, but it aroused her even more.

"So," Yuugi said, "what would you like to do today?"

"I have to finish the interview," Hatate replied before taking a small bite. "I have to get a good article out." The bacon was spicy, like all oni food, but its strong flavor and crunch was growing on her.

Yuugi nodded, her eyes narrowed. "What do you want to know?" Hatate noticed that her knuckles were turning white as she clenched her drink.

"Everything there is to know about your past," hatate said, taking slightly less ladylike bites of bacon as she tried to avoid Yuugi's burning gaze. "You're the most fascinating person I've ever met."

Yuugi took a slow sip of whatever she was drinking before asking, "Article-wise or personally? My closet has far too many skeletons for the public to handle, but I'll share my past with a friend."

"I want to know as a friend now, but I didn't originally intend to care about more than beating Aya. I want you to finish your story, and I won't record anything you don't want in the article."

"I don't care if you record me talking," Yuugi said, "and I'll tell you what I don't want written about me. If we can handle that...I'll tell you everything you need to know." She slid another shred of bacon between her teeth and said while chewing, "If you think the humans couldn't handle it, though, don't mention it. I'm not good at being discreet for humanity's sake."

Hatate nodded and smiled, thinking Yuugi, though reckless and unladylike, made logical sense. If the humans were too squeamish, it wouldn't help her paper. Only the youkai would read it, and it wasn't all of Gensokyo; currently, _The Bunbunmaru_ had Gensokyo wrapped around its metaphorical finger.

"So we can continue after breakfast?" Hatate asked.

Yuugi nodded. "And my workout." She shook her mostly-empty drink. "I didn't drink this for nothing."

Hatate eyed it. "What are you drinking, anyway?"

"It's a protein shake." Yuugi laughed lightly. "I can't eat eggs or any sort of nuts, roasted or otherwise, so I kinda have to create my own concoctions. Wanna try it?"

"I'm good," Hatate said with a laugh. "You go and work out. I'll clean this up for you."

"Sounds good." She held her fist out.

Hatate stared at it before bumping fists, something she had never done with her fellow tengu. It felt kind of strange, but not necessarily wrong.

"Be prepared, though," Yuugi said. "Just because we've won the War doesn't mean that the darkness is over...hell, it just began." With a wink, she picked up her clothes and disappeared into her room.

_For being as brash as she is,_ Hatate thought, _she's really quite the enigma._


	11. Chapter 11

A few hours later, after Hatate had completed her first draft of the beginning of her article and Yuugi was exercised and showered, they returned to their usual places to continue the story.

"Life on Ooeyama was amazing, for a while," Yuugi was saying. "Suika married Kasen officially, and we had a huge oni wedding. Since the war was over, I, along with the other Gumas, was not needed as a leader in combat, but Suika appointed us to be her hired guns."

Hatate's pen slipped. "You were paid to kill people?"

She nodded. "Part-time. And I kept my training school, which was open to tengu, too. I wasn't fond of them and they knew it, so I rarely got any winged students. Even though the War was over, combat became a part of oni culture, so learning to fight was part of childhood education.

"Each of the Gumas owned a school, and every one had a unique twist. Kanaka, our resident nerd, focused on strategy and physics behind combat. Kura, the artist, was in love with the art of fighting and incorporating its elements into dance and the celebration of life...sort of like the tai chi Meiling does. Tora focused on speed and agility, and being as thin as she was, she was the perfect gymnast. And I was mostly interested in building strength, especially with aquatics, since swimming helps warriors so much, as well as professional rescuing."

"Like...lifeguarding?"

"Exactly like that. See, oni are reckless by nature. Someone's gotta be there to help out when accidents happen.

"But that was only part of my day. Suika sent us on missions to kill her enemies. She selected us based on the enemy and our own strengths, of course. See, Suika's a social girl. She talks all the time, always at some party. And when you make a lot of friends, you make a fair share of enemies, too, and many times, they were stronger than her or violated her in some way.

"My first of her assigned victims was the group of thugs who killed her friends as a kid. They were weaker now, much easier to snap their spines, but in a way, i felt like they really ruined Suika, and I wanted to give them a slow death." Yuugi smiled, fangs out and eyes narrowed in a sadistic, catlike expression. "Broke their arms, hung them upside-down from a tree, and bled them out.

"Suika was happy that they were dead, but she was angry that I tortured them...she's not into that sort of thing. So I had to promise to just kill my victims and not play with them. That is, until she got pregnant."

"She got pregnant?"

"Someone took her against her will and created a life. She never asked me to kill him, just gave me a sad, scared glare. And I beat him within an inch of his life. Tore him to pieces and scattered them across his house, smearing my name with his blood on the walls.

"Her baby was stillborn, and she really started drinking a lot after that." Her eyes widened. "It was so bad that Kasen left her. Suika went in a total downward spiral after that, always staggering, always angry with someone. And she started kidnapping human girls for her sexual enjoyment...she needed a sort of release, and now that Kasen divorced her, she didn't have her own regular woman.

"And then Tsuki got sick. She grew up to be a fine, responsible young woman who helped me train my warriors. It started with a flu. And then she couldn't stop vomiting. She refused to eat. Forgot who we were. And then she died." Yuugi blinked quickly. "After all I had done to keep her alive and well, to give her the best life I could, I tortured her until her body gave up and attacked itself. She was only thirty when she passed on. We had a traditional oni funeral, the sort with binge drinking and music and fun; since oni see life as a big celebration, passing on was like going to a different party. It didn't mean we weren't sad, just that we knew she'd be okay now. I just wished I could've been the one to make it okay."

Hatate reached out and touched her hand, and Yuugi squeezed it. Her hands were warm and calloused from wielding weapons.

"I, too, started going down the wrong path. I stayed away from drugs, since I didn't want to see things that weren't there, but I drank a lot. And I became violent. Impulsively violent. Alcohol wasn't an escape, but a method of release.

"Suika knew this and sent me to kill her newest whore's betrothed so his blood wasn't on her hands. She knew I had to go out and enjoy taking someone's life or I'd turn on my own people. So I got drunk, found him, and beat him to death with my kanabo." She leaned forward. "There's a high that comes with murder. That was my drug. Violence.

"Apparently, the whore had a brother who witnessed the event and sought me out. He tried to kill me, to avenge his almost-brother-in-law and sister, but I won. And as he laid dying beneath me, he didn't call me a monster like my other victims. Instead, he apologized. And I stopped. I took him to my place and nursed him back to health, really considering that I was becoming a monster. I never knew what he meant by his apologies, but I started talking to him a lot, eventually having sex with him."

"You slept with a man?!"

"The only one."

"Are you bisexual?"

"No. Not at all. I just liked him and wanted to experiment. I didn't love him, and Suika told me that I'd eventually kill him, since humans can't physically keep up with oni, so I gave him my blessing and set him free.

"I stayed friends with him until he died of old age. In the meantime, Suika's habits got worse and she kidnapped the emperor's teenage daughter. And that was a turning point for all of us."


	12. Chapter 12

"The emperor's daughter?" Hatate asked incredulously. She always thought Suika was a little thoughtless, but this seemed extreme even by her standards.

Yuugi nodded. "It was love, though, not like the previous kidnappings. I saw them sneak off together a lot, Suika disguised as a teenage girl. Suika was too afraid to reveal herself, because she thought that the girl would leave her, so she took her instead.

"She was a sweet girl, really. Her name was Aiko, she was sixteen, and she was everything an oni was not: polite, organized, tall, soft-spoken, and sober. Somehow the pair worked, though. Suika revealed herself once Aiko was in her domain. And Aiko said that she wanted to become an oni, too."

"Is that possible?" Hatate tapped her lip with her pen.

Yuugi nodded. "If you're a human woman, the transformation, called _yena kho'xaevison_ in Oni, is possible."

"How is it done?"

"You'll laugh."

Hatate gave Yuugi her most serious face.

Yuugi leaned forward. Hatate had never seen Yuugi up this close before, and it made her heart beat faster. Her skin wasn't flawless and her smile was crooked, as usual, yet Hatate felt her mind go blank as she looked at her eyes. They were lidded but almond shaped, a rare beauty in Gensokyo, and the color of a light gold with flecks of red in them. The slightly excited-or possibly drunken-flush in her cheeks made Hatate blush.

Just as she busied herself with memorizing every inch of Yuugi's face, the oni said, "Sex."

"That's it?" Hatate asked in a whisper.

"It's a little more complicated than just sex, 'course," Yuugi replied, averting her eyes but not pulling away. "The human woman has to be so pleasured, so dominated, so _in love_that she can't imagine living or dying without her oni lover, and therefore becomes one herself.

"A lot of people think human women become oni out of anger or jealousy, but really, they were oni all along, and that anger revealed themselves. Oni are kami of lust and passion are only created through it."

Yuugi started to sit back out of Hatate's personal space, but the tengu felt compelled to do something bold and onilike: she leaned closer to Yuugi, their noses touching, and kissed her.

Yuugi stiffened with surprise for a moment before shivering and returning the kiss. Hatate had been with women before, but it was nothing like this. Hatate felt sparks inside of her, and her mind lost all concept of thought, only touch. Every nerve in her body lit up with excitement as Yuugi's tongue ran over her own, and she reached for her hands. Once their fingers linked, Yuugi pulled away, panting just a breath away from her lips.

"I'm sorry," Hatate said.

Yuugi smiled and pulled back, and Hatate noticed that her cheeks were more flushed. "Don't apologize, Hatate. It was nice." She cleared her throat. "So, what was I saying?"

"Um," Hatate scrambled fo rher pen, feeling flustered and extremely aroused. "Suika and Aiko..."

"Right! Suika agreed and they did it that night. The next day, we had some...interesting male visitors. They claimed to be oni themselves, and everyone knows there are no male oni.

"I told Suika, and she said she'd humor them, so she had us Four on guard as she talked with them. They brought her sake, and being that she's an addict, she couldn't resist. Kasen later told me that the sake was an addictive truth serum and a sedative created by tengu during the War, and she assumed the men got it either from tengu or from a priest. But either way, it made Suika spill her deepest, darkest secrets, go wild for a little, and pass out.

"I didn't know what was going on at first; one of the men slipped some in my own drink when I wasn't looking at it made my mind fuzzy. When I woke up to Kasen pouring water over me, she explained what she found out about the sake and told me that Suika was in trouble.

"We found her chained to her bed, in her true form, with the leader of the men holding a sword over her throat."

"True form?"

"We're demons. Seing our true forms is seeing what our souls look like. It was a technique we developed during the War; when girls turned of age, Kasen bound them to their names, making them transform to their true forms when called. We were tougher like that in combat. More intimidating."

"What does yours look like?"

Yuugi blushed. "I hope you never find out. Anyway, before I could stop him, the leader...decapitated Suika." Yuugi took a slow breath. "It was probably the hardest thing I ever witnessed, and I've seen a lot. Time seemed to stop. I remember screaming and Kasen throwing me my kanabo, but nothing after that. I do remember the men revealing themselves as warriors hired from the emperor to kill his daughter's kidnapper, though. I also remember killing several because of the euphoria. Then I puked violently and passed out.

"Kasen woke me up and said that the leader got Suika's head and she was going to retrieve it. We both knew that Suika could manipulate density-it was her favorite party trick-and we figured that, if Tora and I awakened her spirit and Kasen got the head, we could somehow make her whole again. But Kasen lost her arm in the fight. I sent Kura and Kanaka to go with her, knowing that her right arm was not her kanabo arm, and they left.

"It all worked out in the end, but we lost Kura to the palace guard." She did her hand-prayer-blessing before continuing. "When Suika came around, she appointed the four of us as the Devas and declared war on humanity."


	13. Chapter 13

"Little Suika declared war on humanity." The way Hatate spoke made it not a question, but a baffled statement.

"It was ugly, long, and violent. We banded with the tengu, not as friends, but as allies, because we believed that we youkai should be superior. While the tengu drove religious folks to madness and invoked plagues on the common people, we oni attacked the warriors, the growing militaries, and seduced women to increase numbers and, well, women are pretty. Even if humanity sucks, their women don't." Yuugi laughed lightly. "Through all the violence, we oni became sort of popular in Japan, making it into stories and plays.

"But then the tengu turned on us. They began inspiring humanity to invent, to create, to build and industrialize. The pollution created by human progress gave us oni what humans call asthma. Humanity, being so obsessed with science, began to forget about us, thinking of us as only scary stories to tell disobedient children. And our numbers dropped very, very quickly; a plague came on, and with our asthma, we were too weak to fight it off.

"Kasen met a witch, Luri Mae Isaacson, and had her help find a cure. I, of course, fell for her-I happen to like intellectuals-and we had a relationship until she told us that we couldn't stay on the surface.

"She helped us relocated to the Ancient City so we could heal. She had the cure, but with the smog on the surface, we would never be well enough for it to work. But executing the cure took too much of her energy, and she eventually died." Yuugi blinked quickly. "We gave her a traditional oni funeral and stayed, alive and well, in the City. A lot of us died off years later, through violence and usual circumstances, but humans who cared didn't bother coming down to hunt us like before, and humans who didn't care couldn't harm us with pollution.

"Suika befriended Yukari and heard about a place called Gensokyo that would be a safe, pollution-free haven for youkai and left with Kasen. Until the shrine maiden came down here to solve an incident, I hadn't heard from Suika since, but Yukari now lets us visit each other regularly.

"That's...pretty much my life up to this point."

Hatate finished writing her notes before asking, "And what do you do now?"

"I'm one of the oldest oni here, and being a Deva, I have to make political decisions when issues arise. I try to keep oni culture alive down here, since it's dead everywhere else. And we all help keep the human souls in hell until their punishments and purification are complete and they re-enter the reincarnation cycle."

"You seem bored."

"I am!" Yuugi exclaimed. "I hate to say it, but I almost miss being at war. At least unexpected things happened."

"Well, are you in a relationship? Those are unexpected." Hatate flushed a dark shade of pink after those words escaped her lips. _You idiot,_ she chastised herself, _she's so much more interesting than you are...there's no way she's interested..._

"True." Yuugi didn't seem to notice the implication. "I should find someone to settle down with, but Suika isn't into me aside from sex and Parsee is confusing." She took a thoughtful drink of sake. "I don't know what we are. But if you know anyone who's into sparring, parties, and wild sex, pass my name around, hai?"

Hatate's blush darkened. "Pardon my...tengu indirectness, but I was implying that..." She swallowed. "I want to try something."

Yuugi raised her eyebrows.

"At least sex," Hatate said quickly. "That kiss was amazing and you're so interesting and-"

Yuugi had walked over to Hatate's seat and scooped her up bridal-style. "I'll definitely have sex with you," she said before pulling her in for another kiss...


	14. Chapter 14

Hatate was not a virgin, but beneath Yuugi's hands, she felt like an inexperienced girl. She wasn't sure how to tilt her head, to kiss as passionately as Yuugi did, if her hands should wander at all. Yuugi was intoxicating, and she wanted to see, stroke, and tease every inch of her. But Hatate couldn't imagine being anything but ordinary to Yuugi; despite her height, Yuugi was an experienced woman. After a brief mental war, Hatate let the oni take control.

Yuugi had carried the tengu journalist into her bedroom, a room Hatate never saw before. She half-expected it to be messy, but aside from the laundry in the corner, it was rather clean. Her bed was made with an old quilt similar to to the one Hatate slept beneath and a pile of pillows. The light blue walls were covered in traditional Japanese art, calendars with notes written in Oni, and a display of swords. Hatate wanted to inspect the jewelry hanging above her dresser-Hatate didn't expect Yuugi to be the type of woman to wear jewelry aside from shackles and assorted chains-but by the time Hatate had registered the details of her room, Yuugi pinned her down on the bed, straddled her hips, and kissed her all over.

Hatate sighed as Yuugi's lips closed over her ear and she rolled her teeth over it. She could feel her right hand running up and down her stomach before resting on her breasts, making her shiver in delight.

Yuugi sat up and cocked her head, a curious expression. "You're already excited, aren't you?" Her kiss-swollen lips twitched into a sideways smile, revealing her retracted fangs.

A shiver of arousal shot through Hatate's body. "Just...do me already." The tengu's clothes weren't even off, and she was panting.

"Undress yourself," Yuugi demanded with a grin.

Hatate's eyes widened. "You're not going to do it?"

"I want to watch." With that, Yuugi pulled her shirt and sports bra off.

Hatate was busy fumbling with the clasp of her bra when her eyes fell on Yuugi's breasts. She imagined them to be larger, but Yuugi had a small frame, and they were proportional with her body. Even so, she was bigger than Hatate; the tengu had very little curvature to boast.

In a swift motion, Yuugi pulled off her skirt and boyshirts underneath. Hatate felt dizzy. She tried very hard not to stare between Yuugi's legs and to focus on undressing herself, but temptation won her over. Yuugi shaved, making her state of arousal very visible to Hatate. Yuugi didn't seem to mind her wandering eyes; rather, she spent her time taking in Hatate's body.

Once her panties were off, Yuugi tackled her, lowering her mouth to her nipple, suckling and rolling it between her teeth while toying with the other between her fingers. Hatate closed her eyes and emitted a rather loud moan. She had never wanted anyone to touch her as roughly as she wanted Yuugi to fondle her.

"Please," the tengu managed to say. As embarrassed as she was of the dark curls between her legs, she spread her legs to show just how much she craved the oni's attention.

Yuugi didn't hesitate; she brought her other hand to Hatate's heat and traced her fingers along the slit before focusing on her clit. Hatate cursed, her moans increasing their volume. The oni was barely touching her and she was already almost over the edge. Yuugi chuckled and kissed her lips to silence her, rubbing the nub faster and more roughly. Hatate felt the desperate to pee all the sudden, which confused her sex-crazed mind, but she couldn't pay too much attention to it. She was on the brink of the most powerful orgasm of her life.

She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn't see right. Sparks danced over her blurred vision until it faded to white. Every inch of her being tingled with a pleasure she had never felt before. With a scream, she felt herself contract and heard Yuugi chuckle slightly. Sometime warm short out from her core, and she sat up in alarm, her brain still fuzzy from her orgasm.

"I think I just wet myself," Hatate said, her voice sounding slurred and far away.

"No," Yuugi laughed, "You squirted. It means I did it right."

"That's...supposed to happen?"

Yuugi turned pale. "You're not a _virgin_, are you?"

Hatate shook her head quickly. "I've had sex before, but...I've never had that happen."

"Hmm. You've had some bad sex, then."

They lied there for a while as Hatate caught her breath. Every bit of the tengu felt overwhelmed with utter passion and bliss that, once she regained her energy, she sat atop the oni and kissed her. On the inside, she was quivering with anxiety, the possibility that she wasn't doing a good job and Yuugi would walk out on her, but Hatate pushed her hesitation out of her mind.

_Be strong like an oni,_ Hatate told herself. _Show her how you feel._

She nibbled light kisses down Yuugi's chest before bringing them around her nipple, just as Yuugi had done to her. Yuugi was a lot louder than Hatate, and just by hearing the volume of her moans, she knew she was doing it right. Heart pounding, she brought her hand between Yuugi's legs and traced between the wet folds. Yuugi let out a surprised gasp and arched her back, wordlessly demanding more.

_I'll give you more._ Hatate kissed down her flat stomach and hips before closing her lips around Yuugi's clit. The oni sighed and ran her fingers through the journalist's hair before clenching a fistful and holding her head in place.

"Don't go easy on me," Yuugi said in between gasps.

Hatate tried to nod, but she couldn't move her head, she she did as she was told. She nibbled her teeth at Yuugi's clit, listening to the curses and moans of pleasure that followed. Hatate figured she was close by the way her legs were quivering, and she slid two of her fingers inside.

"Don't come until I tell you," Hatate murmured. In the back of her mind, she wondered where she built up the bravado to ask such things of Yuugi, but the oni didn't seem to mind.

"Do your worst...I dare you."

Hatate curled her fingers and began thrusting, rubbing every inch of her wet walls, still relentlessly nibbling her clit. Yuugi wasn't moaning anymore; she was shrieking and tightening her grip on Hatate's hair to the point it made her head hurt. But the tengu didn't mind. She had to show the oni how much she adored her, to make her feel the ecstasy she felt.

"Please, Hatate!" Yuugi shouted. The oni was squirming, and Hatate could feel her involuntarily contract. "Shit...I can't..."

"Come for me, Yuugi."

With an obscene moan, she relased her grip, but Hatate didn't let her ride the rush; she continued fingering the oni and suckling her clit, making her come again and again. The tengu was quite surprised at her stamina and libido, despite what she had heard of oni nymphomania before. She also noticed that each orgasm following grew increasingly more powerful, yet more easily triggered.

The final time, Hatate let her fingers rub Yuugi's clit roughly, not touching her anywhere else. As Yuugi emitted a final scream of pleasure, Hatate crawled up her body and kissed her, rolling her tongue over hers. Yuugi met her passion, battling her tongue for dominance. Being that she was an oni, Hatate gave in and curled up on Yuugi's side, her head resting on Yuugi's shoulder.

"That," Yuugi said with a grin, "was fucking fantastic." She happily kissed every inch of Hatate's face before capturing her lips again. This time, the kiss was sweet and intimate, a kiss between lovers.

"I love you," Hatate blurted.

Immediately, the tengu regretted it. Yuugi's eyes clouded with an emotion Hatate hadn't seen before-a blend of pity, lust, and frustration.

"You hardly know me, Hatate." The way she spoke seemed cold and irritated, a polar opposite of the way she sounded just moments ago.

"I know a lot about you," Hatate replied, but she knew she was digging herself in a hole. There was no way to win with Yuugi.

Yuugi chewed her lip. "I don't want to hurt you. Hatate, I'm not a nice girl. I'm brash. I drink too much. I stay out late. I get in fights. I don't know how you could handle a relationship with me."

"I didn't say anything about a relationship."

Yuugi blushed. "I just assumed-"

Hatate cut her off. "No, I want one. I just don't want to move too quickly or leave without you knowing how I feel."

Yuugi left a lingering kiss on Hatate's lips and slid off the bed, pulling on the clothes she discarded earlier.

"Where are you going?" Hatate was beginning to panic; her chest felt tight, making it hard to breathe.

"Out. I need to think."


	15. Chapter 15

For someone who just needed space to think, Yuugi slammed her front door rather loudly. Hatate felt a lump swell in her throat, but she swallowed it. _You just slept with Yuugi,_ she told herself. _She likes you that much, right?_

She slid out of bed and dressed herself before looking for her notebook. She figured that, while she waited for Yuugi, she could get a decent portion of her article written. It was old-fashioned to handwrite a newspaper article, but Hatate always caught her grammar errors this way. Once the notebook was recovered, she curled up on Yuugi's bed and started writing.

_If Yuugi doesn't love me now, I'll win her over with this,_ Hatate thought with a small smile. That was when she realized that she wasn't writing the article to beat Aya anymore.

It was for the oni herself.

~

A few hours had passed, and Yuugi still had not returned. The entire article was drafted, so Hatate got up to walk around the room. Unlike most tengu, Hatate loved being indoors-it felt safe somehow-and the comfort of Yuugi's room only added to her security. But like most tengu, she was attracted to shiny objects, and immediately fixated on Yuugi's jewelry.

It was all on display on what looked like a wire tree, a similar hanger to what Hatate had in her own room. As she inspected the various necklaces, she noticed that they had a name engraved on the pendant: Khadeja. Yuugi never mentioned knowing anyone named Khadeja, so she decided that she would have to ask the oni about it after she returned.

That was when she found the journal.

It was below the jewelry tree and covered in black leather. Hatate smirked. _Yuugi keeps a journal?_ She pulled it out and inspected it. Engraved in gold on the cover was the name Khadeja Hoshiguma-douji.

_So Yuugi's name is really Khadeja,_ Hatate realized as she flipped through the pages. Yuugi wrote in Oni in messy handwriting that was almost impossible to decipher. In the center was a yellowed page folded up neatly.

Hatate pulled it out, unfolded it, and gasped. It was a realistic nude sketch of Yuugi herself. Her hair was dark and close-cropped here, possibly her old look back in the Ooeyama days, but her eyes held the same burning passion, her lips the same confident smirk, her horn the same star, that it was obvious that it was her. As Hatate inspected it, she felt a burning arousal engulf her...

"Hey, tengu!"

Hatate jumped about a foot in the air, dropping the journal and drawing.

Suika was standing in the doorway, a plate of fried steak in her hands.

"S-Suika!" Hatate gasped. "What are you doing here?"

Her brown eyes grew big and innocent, but her mischievous grin betrayed the childlike image. "I was in the neighborhood. Wanted food. Didn't wanna pay for it. Here I am."

Hatate nodded slowly. "You have a key?"

"Yeah. Yuugi lets me come over whenever I want." She shoved a piece of steak in her mouth for good measure. "What're _you_ doing here?"

"Yuugi and I had sex," Hatate blurted before she could stop herself. She almost wondered if being around oni so much influenced her bluntness.

Suika grinned. "Congrats. Was it good?"

Hatate nodded, relieved that the oni wasn't being judgemental.

"So...where is she?"

"I told her I loved her and she needed time to think."

Suika chewed thoughtfully, then sat on Yuugi's bed, motioning for Hatate to sit beside her. "Something you gotta know about Yuugi is that she likes to be the strong one all the time...and when people make her feel romantically soft, she feels like she needs to close off. She's always done it. But lemme tell you, when she's sweet, she's like a whole other person. It's great to see that softer side sometimes. But...for now, just give her a little space."

"But we had sex."

Suika laughed. "Oni have a different definition of sex than other people do. For us, it's like a bond of friendship. Like, we'll always be there for each other. We've got a word for it in Oni: _evixai_. But making love is a whole other thing. It...feels different. That's _ken'evi_. So...when you were going at it, what did it feel like?"

"Passionate and...I'd never felt anything like it before."

"Hm. I'll talk to her about it. If I had to bet money on it, then she's at the bar." As Suika stood to leave, she noticed the drawing on the floor. "Can I have this? It's mine. I drew it."

"You drew Yuugi naked?"

Suika grinned sheepishly. "Yeah...it was for my Onigashima Project. We were gonna be apart for a long time, and I wanted something to remember her by."

"What's the Onigashima Project?"

Suika hesitated. "She didn't tell you?"

Hatate scrambled for her notebook. "You got some time?"

"Sure. I'll tell you all I remember of it."


	16. Chapter 16

Suika sat uncomfortably close to Hatate, and she wasn't sure if she liked it. Something about her seemed a little off. Perhaps it was the way Suika always tilted to one side, or how fast she talked, or maybe that she reeked of alcohol. The oni girl was sweet, there was no doubt about it, but she was even more aggressive than Yuugi in some ways. It wasn't intimidating in the same way, though, but more clingy.

"I like humans," Suika said. "I always have. They're interesting to me. So I wanted to create a place where humans and oni could work on our interactions so we could live side-by-side on Earth. I found an island abandoned by people, and I decided to use it. It was called Onigashima.

"I started hosting a buncha parties there. At first, they were oni-exclusive, so we could get a feel for the environment and stuff. But I started asking them to leave and inviting humans to spend time with me. At first, it went really well, but then I started noticing that men were the only humans brave enough to go to Onigashima. I felt outnumbered, gender-wise." She looked up. "I'm not a man-hater or anything...I just wanted to meet some women, y'know?"

Hatate nodded, struggling to write quickly as Suika put an arm around her and rested her forehead on her shoulder. She couldn't help but wonder how much the oni had to drink that day; their mouths weren't close, and she could taste the sake on her breath.

"It went awry after a while...since humans figured out that I had a weakness for alcohol, they started...putting things in my drinks. Making me do things."

"What kind of things?"

Suika lifted her head so her eyes fixed on Hatate's. "I don't remember most of it, but I'd wake up in these odd positions, surrounded by people just laughing at me..."

"You don't have to...go into detail, if you don't want to." Hatate's heart was racing, and she couldn't figure out why.

"The only one I remember was...the first man who ever went to Onigashima. He was nice, I thought, and I could be a little more vulnerable around him...but he took advantage of that. I got pregnant after that."

"Against your will."

Suika nodded. "I had Yuugi kill him afterward."

"Why don't you ever kill people?"

Suika sniffed. "I'm an empath. I...can't do that. I get really emotionally attached to people." She rubbed Hatate's arm. "Yuugi kinda gets off on violence, so it's different."

"Gets off on violence?"

Suika giggled. She was back to looking like a little girl again. It was strange how she could seem so intense for a few moments, then so carefree the next. "Not sexually. She just...she gets high."

"She's mentioned that."

"I've done it before, though. In emergency situations. And if I'm really mad. I was so disgusted with people after I was...ravaged like that. After Yuugi gave him what he had coming...I sunk the island."

Hatate winced.

"I felt every person on that island die." Suika shivered. "One by one. Their lungs filling with water..."

"Okay, okay, I think I have enough on my article now!" Hatate said quickly, shrugging Suika away.

Suika clung on. "Thank you for listening to me, Hatate-san..."

Hatate felt a little sorry for the oni. She didn't want to sit there and be groped by her anymore, but she seemed so lonely. It would probably be hard to live that long and see so much death when one was so emotional.

But she couldn't linger on it for long. Almost immediately, the front door swung open.

Suika pulled away. "Yuugi's home!"

"Suika?" Yuugi sounded rather slurred, her steps uneven as she made her way to the door.

Hatate gasped as she looked at the oni. Her right leg was wrapped up with gauze, but was quickly bleeding through. She was clutching ice to her left eye, and her knuckles were covered in blood. Her right arm was behind her back, holding something.

"What happened?" Hatate asked, jumping up to inspect her closely.

"I bought you flowers." Yuugi held out her other arm, revealing the bundle of roses.

Hatate blanched. "You...bought those for me. While I was sitting here, think you didn't care about me?"

Yuugi grinned sheepishly. "I wanted to surprise you. But anyway, when I was getting it signed...I said your name, and one of the oni in the store didn't take too kindly to me getting flowers for a tengu."

"That's so racist!" Suika shouted. "Who cares if you fall for a tengu? Hatate's awesome!"

"I know. So I stood up for her honor. And, well, I bled a lot." Yuugi laughed lightly, as if her getting in a fight was absolutely no big deal, but Hatate could see the way she winced and adjusted the ice.

"You should lay down," Hatate said, taking the flowers gingerly from her.

"I'm fine, really!" Yuugi reassured her.

But Hatate took her arm and led her to her bed. "You need to elevate that."

"Honey, I can take care of myself..."

Hatate ignored her and fussed over elevating her bleeding leg with pillows. "Suika, can you get some more gauze?"

"Sure, sure!" The redhaired oni scampered out of the room, giggling slightly. "Have fun, you two."

"Oh, shut up," Hatate hissed.

Yuugi smiled up at the tengu. "It's really sweet of you to do this."

"Well, as your girlfriend, it's my job to take care of you."

"Eh?" Yuugi quirked an eyebrow. "Why not the other way around?"

"Because you're the wild one, and I'm reserved. It's just the way the world works."

"You know how else the world works?"

"How?"

Yuugi scooted to her side. "Lovers often lay beside each other."

Hatate smiled. "As soon as we change the bandage, I'll cuddle with you."

Yuugi sighed. "I really do like you a lot, Hatate. I'm glad you came down here."

"As am I." And she really was.


End file.
